Unofficial news and tips about Google

January 27, 2008

Google Docs in Firefox Sidebar

Google Docs Bar (gDocsBar) is a Firefox extension that shows the list of documents from Google Docs in the sidebar. The extension has many features from Google's file explorer: you can search for a file, restrict the list to documents, spreadsheets or presentations and view a certain folder (the subfolders aren't yet supported).

A great feature that makes this extension more valuable is uploading files using drag and drop. Drag one or more files from Windows Explorer to the sidebar and they'll be uploaded in the background.

For those who are worried about security, the extension sends your credentials directly to Google and stores them in Firefox's password manager. After installing the extension, you can make the sidebar visible by going to View > Sidebar > Google Docs Bar. The sidebar will always show the list of documents and it's useful if you frequently use Google Docs.

I sure hope Firefox is not dumb enough to allow plugin creators to grab our password info..like this one may be doing......and there also needs to be an extension blacklist..otherwise it will spell doom for Firefox before long.

@klingon:You're free to check the source code of the extension. It's available in a JAR archive in your Firefox profile.

Firefox can't prevent an application to save a password or send it to a third-party site simply because it's impossible to do that. Firefox can't guess which site is allowed to receive a password. From what I've seen, this extension saves your Google credentials in Firefox's password manager and directly sends them to Google.

If you do a more in-depth investigation and find something interesting, please let us know.

Another good FF extension that allows you to open several kinds of documents is Open IT Online (http://www.openitonline.com). This one does not require to provide any password and in addition you can choose which online service to use among Google Docs, Zoho and ThinkFree. Not bad.